The pub was bustling, filled to the brim with end-of-the-week revellers. Fion loved ninth nights, everyone always started them in such a good mood, with the prospect of spending the next day laying about. Sarah had already been chair lifted back over to the bar once, when the crush had gotten too heavy for her to walk back on her own.

"Oh my gods, Fion, I cannot believe they just did that!" Sarah gushed. "What if my Dad finds out? He'll like, kill me dead or something!"

"No he won't!" Fion said, laughing and picking up another round of schooners, arms straining under the weight. "I have him wrapped around my little finger, you just come get me and we'll cry at him until he feels guilty."

"You are so bad Fion!" Sarah replied, not meaning a word of it and a grin already splitting her face. "You're lucky I love you!"

Fion blew her a kiss with her free hand before placing it under her serving tray to help her carry it. She ducked and dodged through the crowd like a pro, placing the beers in front of their respective owners with a wink and a smile. She liked passing the wick tables, where the regulars would cry "Nanabo! Nanabo!" at the barmaids and then flirt like crazy, handing out tips like they were water. The students were a different kind of amusing, nervous before they hit the cups and lecherous afterwards. Fion didn't care, she had a tavern full of men, human and wick, that weren't about to let the women who gave them booze get in trouble.

She swanned past a table of galdori in Brunnhold uniforms with a swagger in her step, hair flouncing behind and her tray beneath her arm. She'd taken another order for a round while she'd been handing the last out, they could wait their turn.

Lochlan had his face in his hands, trying to suppress another bout of contagious laughter. Emilio was once again telling the story of the circumstances surrounding the final breakup of him and his long term on-and-off girlfriend.

"So she dries off, and starts telling me about how she slept with that scrapteaser Finnley and thought she was pregnant."

Expectant grins broke out all round - they all knew how this ended.
Dillon cut in with the ultimate line, "Only kidding, I just wanted to piss on you for all the hurt you've caused me!" and they all fell about in hysterics.

Lochlan noticed the barmaid approaching, and his drink was empty. Still with his face in one hand, he raised the other, hailing her to take an order, then looked up when she swished past ignoring them completely.

"What the..." he said.

"Ouch! You gonna take that, Locky? You didn't get served! Looks like the Wicks' orders are more important!" said Emilio.

"Don't worry about it Loch, I still have a way to go on mine, I'll order the next one in a minute if you want?" offered Arvin, who had never been a heavy drinker and often struggled to match drinks when he bothered to try.

"No way, that's not the point," Loch said to Arvin, then turned in the direction of the waitress and in a joking tone called out, "who's a guy gotta fuck to get a drink around here?"

Fion only caught the student's catcall and not the rest of the conversation. She turned on her heel, long black hair spinning behind and gave them all an imperious look. This was her turf, not theirs.

"My boss." She said loudly, pointing over at an enormous, muscley man standing behind the bar.

He waved at them, a wide grin showing enormous white teeth. His name was Benno. He'd spent his life working at that bar, lunking barrels to and fro, which explained his size. He was actually a big softy but they didn't need to know that. He encouraged the barmaids to use him as a prop when customers needed to be reigned in.

"He likes the young boys." She said with a wink, Benno nodding slowly behind her.

The student had looked oddly familiar... Fion shook it off. Benno raised an eyebrow at her as she manoeuvred her way back behind the bar.

"I should fire you for pulling stunts like that." He said, patting her head gently with his enormous hand. "You'd better serve them next."

Fion grinned, giggling at the head pat.

"I will, boss!"

She stopped by the student's table with a tray full of beer.

"So, what would you boys like to drink?" She asked, eyes sparkling. "You won't even have to fuck anybody!"

That boy looked really familiar...

Loch fell silent, mouth open, and his eyebrows skyrocketed.
Oshi-



His friends burst into fits of laughter and Lochlan joined them a moment later, dislodged from his stunned fixation into giggles.

"Hahaha, you're salt-lick, Lochlan!" said Dillon.

"That guy is gonna tenderise you!" Emilio chimed in.

"Hey shut up, she's coming over isn't she?" Loch said, stifling more laughter and face reddening.



Loch liked that, there was something refreshing about someone who could give as good as she got, and it really was gutsy coming from a human girl, and a young one at that!

"Well now, I feel like I'm missing out! But I suppose another round of your cheapest barrel scraping froth will have to do. Think you can handle that?"

He had the most amazing, golden eyes. Fion liked striking eyes and there was something about that particular pair that struck a chord in her. She had seen them before. The smile as well, though it had a different flavour in the tavern than they had when she'd seen them last. No way.

It was him.



Fion rallied admirably.

"Of course, if you think you can drink it." She turned away, smile still fixed, to lay out the glasses she already had.

She kept smiling and talking, running automatically though her pulse was racing. It was the boy, she didn't even know his name. She'd though she'd never see him again though the gods knew she remembered him. His voice had dulled through her memory but she could tell.

He was significantly more vulgar than he had been... Although so was she.

Sarah was giving her a funny look.

"Oi, Fi, you look like you've seen a ghost." She said, looking a little concerned.

"Maybe I have." She replied honestly.

"What?" Sarah asked, her pretty mouth turning down into a frown.

"Nothing, just thought of something weird, I'm fine. Really." Fion tapped Sarah on the nose and the other girl smiled again.

"Yeah, alright Fi." She said, disappearing again with a tray of spirits this time.

Fion took a deep breath and centred herself. Alioe he was as handsome as she remembered, even if he was one of them. She was going to keep calm and behave in an altogether normal and sensible fashion. She sighed deeply, shaking out her tension so she could grin again. There, easy as lying.

She walked jauntily over to his table again, four beers in hand. She put them down in front their respective owners with some audible thunks. All part of the service. Benno thought it wasn't authentic beer unless the glass went "kah-thunk".

"That'll be a hat each, boys." She put Lochlan's drink down last. "Except you, this one's on the house."

She smirked at him, working her bravado for all it was worth and then some.

A crowbar could not pry off the goofy grin he wore. In most places they drank the human staff were awkward and shy around the students. She had him beat for a comeback, so instead he laughed loud again. He regarded the sassy barmaid and couldn't help shaking a feeling that there was something he was missing, or the opposite, that the pretty dark haired girl was the final jigsaw piece to a puzzle he couldn't see.

Away she went with their order, and after a moments pause and a brief frown of unconcluded and abandoned thought, he turned back to his friends.

"Well that's that sorted. Drink up Arvin!"

Arvin smiled shyly. "At this rate I'm going to have to cast wakefulness on myself!"

"No worries Arv, don't overdo it," said Dillon, before downing his own half full pint. "Ahhh, s'got some bite, that."

Emilio started on another tangent. "Ahh, this beer reminds me of the time I played that game of Kings, you were there Loch. That fucker Crius pulled the everine card, so I had to drink the dirty pint and-"



Loch started to reach for his pouch of squares when he realised his drink was free.

He looked up, slightly taken aback.

"Oh, uh, thanks! You know, you'll be reinforcing my bad behaviour...or will I be paying for this later?" he winked confidently, unsure of what else to do to cover his confusion.

Her grin was genuine this time.

"What do you think?" She said, teeth flashing, collecting the other student's coins. "Thankee kindly, gentlemen, don't get too rowdy, you hear?"

She melted back into the crowd, taking orders as the bar filled even more with people. Occasionally she'd take a peek back at the boy's table, and her skin would go hot then cold throwing her freckles into stark relief as she paled. She really wanted to talk to him but he didn't look as though he remembered her. Maybe he did things like that all the time and she was just one among many. She desperately wanted to be special to him. She wanted to matter. He was the one link she had to the days before her parents had gone away and life had become harder.

Not that she wanted for much, she was an adult now. She had a job, she had good friends. Her uncle and aunt still lived in the Stacks and made her come around for dinner all the time, since she wasn't living with them anymore. Fion was independent, with prospects, she'd been contemplating finding someone to court with soon. Perhaps marry in a few years, start a family.

She glanced at the boy again. Wishing he would notice her, maybe ask her name so she could ask his. Her heart felt like it was skipping beats. She told herself she was too old for that. Fion didn't sigh at boys. She poured another schooner and exhaled heavily, brows kniting together as she felt herself hoping for something she wasn't allowed to have.

Time sloshed on quickly, as it tended to do on carefree evenings such as these. Emilio told more stories, Dillon matched drinks, and Arvin predictably got the giggles after 4 pints.

It was hideously late, and collectively the boys had run out of cash.

"Get's a free round'f you can fromm bargirl," ventured Emilio.

"No more, no more!" Arvin giggled.

"Hah, sharrap, mother always said...what she say...never push generousness. Thas wa she said." Loch replied.

"Lads. Lads. Lads! Let's sing the - lads! - let's do the one about the hedgehog," insisted Dillon.

Arvin giggled at the prospect, then promptly hiccuped loudly.

"Right, right, we better clear out," Emilio said, "Ah can burley ramumber th way back. If we're done boozin' I'm ready to hitta sack. I'm drinked."

The boys half shuffled, half staggered out of the inn. As it happened Loch was last at the door, and he took advantage of the private moment to take one more look at the barmaid. Immediately he felt foolish for doing so, and mustered his most sober sounding "Goodnight" before clumsily shutting the door behind him.

"...but the hedgehog can never be buggered at all! Lochlan! Get a move on!"

Emilio and Arvin had an arm over eachothers shoulder, largely for balance, and sang the crude local song at the top of their lungs. Dillon walked beside them, but was patting his chest, a technique he professed held back the tides of vomit.

Lochlan kept up pace with the others - it was not difficult, what with Emilio and Arvin swerving liberally from one side of the street to the other, but his attention was elsewhere. He looked up into the cloudless and starry night sky, his thoughts on the young barmaid who had given him a free drink. Loch frowned a little, feeling like he'd forgotten the next line of a song, leaving him stuck repeating the chorus ad infinitum, which coincidentally Emilio and Arvin were suffering greatly from during this particular recital of the hedgehog song.

On their erratic route they visited some parts of town they'd not been to for a long time, largely because they weren't technically on the route home. Around the point that Dillon proclaimed he was taking over the directions before the damned sun came up, Lochlan's eye caught on a doorstep. Looking around he spotted a building that looked suspiciously new compared to those surrounding it.

Hey isn't this where that girl - that girl!

The realisation hit him like a ton of bricks. It must be her! About the right age, and that had to be the same black hair.

She was a barmaid, and she seemed to be doing well. It warmed Lochlan to know she'd landed on her feet, she certainly seemed happy enough, and he'd not noticed any lasting burn damage on her. That was Dr Robertson - he was the best.
And she'd given him a free drink! Perhaps she recognised him? Though she'd barely woke the entire time they worked on her, it wasn't inconceivable.

Suddenly, a yet greater realisation struck Lochlan.
Free booze! Free booze forever!